Why You Should Care About Omnichannel eCommerce

12/18/2017 12:49 PM

The buying decision is a complex process which is why omnichannel retailing has increased in popularity over the years.

The main difference between traditional marketing and omnichannel is that the latter one delivers a seamless and consistent experience to customers at every touchpoint, including brick and mortar stores, marketplaces, social media, web, or mobile.

It’s all about connecting the dots between the channels people use to research and buy products. Let’s see why retailers should take advantage of omnichannel.

Consumers’ Behavior Has Changed

The first step towards building a robust omnichannel strategy is understanding how your audience is shopping.

This is something that has changed over the years, and now, customers are shopping differently.

For example, a buyer may check out the stock availability for a particular item on the online store so they know if they can grab it from the offline store. Or they may visit the offline shop to check the quality and the fit of a certain piece of clothing and then purchase it online for a better price.

There’s also the case where consumers search on marketplaces for a specific product and then go to a company’s site to place the order.

The bottom line is that online shoppers begin their search on various channels which is why it’s important to be present on all of them and create a unified customer experience.

More Channels, Bigger Revenue

This recent study revealed that 73% of customers used multiple channels during their shopping journey. Channel was defined by websites, mobile applications, interactive catalogs, in-store tablets and others.

The omnichannel customers used smartphone apps to compare prices or download coupons, and also took advantage of interactive catalogs, price-checkers, or tablets.

The conclusion of the study was that the more channels a consumer used, the more money they spent.

For example, customers spent on average 4% more on in-store shopping, and 10% more for online purchases compared to those who used only one channel.

Similarly, another study found that companies who are using an omnichannel strategy saw an average of 9.5% increase in revenue year-over-year.

Omnichannel Increases Your Product Discoverability

Ultimately, omnichannel is all about getting your products in front of as many consumers as possible.

This study showed that more than 40% of consumers start their product searches on Amazon and search engines. So when it comes to omnichannel, you should:

Open a pop-up shop. If you don’t have a brick and mortar shop yet and you want to see how that would go for you, you can do a test by opening a pop-up shop.

Optimize for search engines. Because search engines are one of the top three tools consumers use to research products, you need to make sure that people can find your site. Product descriptions, meta information, keywords, mobile-friendliness, SSL certificate, blog posts, and backlinks are some of the most important aspects to consider for proper optimization.

Be present on marketplaces. Amazon is the world’s largest marketplace, not to mention the fact that almost half of all online product searches begin here. So if you’re not present here, then it will be hard for your potential customers to find you.

Conclusion

Retailers of all sizes need to take advantage of these facts and realize that they need to utilize all the channels available out there in order to be where the customer is doing their research.

Hopefully, this article helped you get a better grip on what omnichannel eCommerce means and that it will serve as a guide on how to get more customers.